1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to protective textiles, and in particular, to reactive and adsorptive textiles for providing multi-functional protection from chemical and biological agents and methods for providing and using such textiles for decontamination.
2. Description of Related Art
Historically, activated carbon has been incorporated into textiles for clothing and into filters to provide adsorptive protection. While activated carbon is extremely effective for adsorbing toxic vapors, activated carbon imparts only partial protection against chemical agents, which are captured through physical entrapment within its pores. Since this entrapment is a physical process, activated carbon does nothing to neutralize an absorbed chemical, it simply stores it. Such storage presents a host of problems: these materials may be released over time; the carbon has capacity restrictions and thus cannot be used indefinitely; and storage results in disposal problems after usage. Finally, activated carbon does not provide protection from biological agents (such as anthrax or small pox). Previously, protection against biological contamination has been relegated to barrier methods, i.e. full body suits. In addition to the life support problems associated with hermetic sealing, these barriers present similar disposal problems after being coated with harmful entities.
To fulfill a long standing need to provide biocidal components for protective systems for military and civilian EMS applications, scientists have been developing metal-based nanoparticles. U.S. Pat. No. 6,057,488 discloses effective biocidal properties of metal-oxide nanoparticles when dispersed as a powder or combined in a test tube with biological contaminants. Due to the unique physical properties and size of nanoparticles, it has heretofore been impossible to separate and fix the nanoparticles into a tangible form that could be flexibly integrated into protective systems and combined with conventional adsorbents.
Accordingly, a need exists for an efficient and effective protective system which has biocidal properties for the destruction of biological agents in addition to reactive properties for the adsorption, decomposition and neutralization of chemical agents.